Mike Papantonio Takes On Big Pharma With
Latest Novel “ The Middleman ” By Farron Cousins
Hall of Fame trial lawyer Mike Papantonio is no stranger to taking on the pharmaceutical industry . He and his firm have successfully battled just about every major drug company in business today , securing victories on cases ranging from Fen-Phen to opioids and everything in between .
And now he has a new target within the drug industry : Pharmacy benefit managers , or PBMs . These “ middlemen ” of the drug business have only recently become the focus of the national news for the role that they play in keeping prescription costs higher for American consumers , but Pap and his firm have been on top of them for quite some time .
This fight against the PBMs has inspired Pap ’ s latest novel , The Middleman , and I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mike about his latest work of fiction that is based off real-life cases that he ’ s handling .
Farron :
You ’ ve got this new book out and this is a continuation of the Law & Disorder series that you began many , many years ago . These books are all based on cases that you and your firm have handled over the years . We have gone through all sorts of things with them . We went through the opioid crisis , we ’ ve gone through human trafficking , faulty scopes on weapons . Now you ’ ve got a new one where you ’ re going after the pharmaceutical industry , but specifically a part of the pharmaceutical industry that most people don ’ t even know exists .
Mike :
Yeah , the concept of Pharmacy Benefit Managers , or PBMs , is not something that they hear the term and they have no idea how much it ’ s interfering with healthcare in America . These books , this is a series and the series of books really , they take real life events , real cases . Might be tobacco , it could be opioid litigation , human trafficking . It can be all of these things that you hear about in the headlines and you get a little bit of it , but media has become so two-minute where you hear the story and the story disappears . It ’ s almost dysfunctional where it comes to really delivering the story behind the story .
For example , on human trafficking , that book , nobody knew those details . Well , the same is true here with PBMs . They hear it , but they have no understanding about the idea that insulin that costs $ 2 for a pharmaceutical company to produce is being sold for $ 270 . It ’ s almost as if nobody asks those questions . They don ’ t have any reason to know really what happened . My goal in these books is to tell a good story , and obviously they sell well so I guess they ’ re good stories , but at the same time is to have the reader come away and maybe Google and say , “ Is this true ? Did this really happen ? Did a pharmaceutical case , did a pharmaceutical company mark up ?”
The insulin case is simply one example . There are cases where they mark up on pharmaceuticals 5000 %, and you have people making decisions , can I take insulin or can I buy groceries ? When we get to that point in this culture and media is not able to explain it , then you have to say , “ Okay , what ’ s plan B ?” Plan B is to tell stories that interests people , that entertain him , and they come away understanding what happened to them .
Farron :
Nicholas Deketomis is already a beloved character . Now in The Middleman , this new book , Deke is going up against Conner Devlin , who is the CEO of a pharmaceutical company . Now , did you happen to base this particular CEO , is he based on anyone you ’ ve met while trying your cases ?
Mike :
I used Devlin in this book because he ’ s a composite . I would go as far as , and I ’ ve said this way long before I wrote this book , is that the pharmaceutical industry is really no different from the mobster industry . They ’ re dressed up in suits , they have MBAs , they have great educations at Harvard and Yale , they ’ re the CEO of a company . But if you really drill down on the structure of how the pharmaceutical industry works , it ’ s a mobster analysis . Devlin in the book is a real mobster . Devlin is an Irish mobster who ’ s immigrated to America , has huge amounts of money and says , “ Look , why are we taking risks selling illegal drugs ? Why am I risking selling cocaine or meth or why am I taking any risks like that ? All I have to do is move into the legal drug business ,” and that ’ s what he does .
His mob takes over this company that ’ s in the business of selling insulin . He says , “ I ’ m going to do it the same way I would as any other mobster would do it . I ’ m going to push the
64 The Trial Lawyer